Comunidad, clase y cultura en los trabajadores mineros del Sur de Portugal

Abstract

This article analyses the formation of mining communities at the Alentejo's pyrite belt (south of Portugal) between 1860s and 1960s. Two kinds of sources were used in this research. On one hand, the mining engineers' reports of State inspections and local archives, particularly, the archives of social institutions. At the other, individual and family memories of living experiences which were collected between 1985 and 1989 in Aljustrel (the main mining town of that region). The analysis stresses the importance of the communalization process for the construction of a class identity and class consciousness. It also stresses the role of the family/solidarity ties in the reproduction of the position occupied by individual workers within the mining companies. The paternalist policy of those companies, in particular, their housing arrangements and recruitments practices had a major role in the workers' stabilization. Three phases or periods can be identified in historical perspective. The first one, the labor market is open to the rural milieu due to important changes in the working process that allowed for the general use of unskilled laborers. This short period is succeded by a larger one characterized by the stability of the individual and collective relations. This phase ends up with a new period of emigration to Europe's industrialized countries and to Lisbon. This process was reinforced by the increase of formal education and led to social and professional mobility. The workers families' memories reflected those transitional phases between a rural and an industrial society. This essay offers two main points: first, the recruitment milieu was the main source of the culture of each community, and second, the nature of class conflict was bounded to the organizational practices of the companies in its relationship with the workers.